Kurtz endures humiliating grilling on his own show over gay NBA player story

The tables were turned on CNN media critic Howard Kurtz on Sunday when he submitted to being grilled by two fellow media critics on his own show over a series of mistakes including false claims about a gay NBC player.

The Daily Beast announced last week that it had a retracted a column about NBA player Jason Collins and was terminating its relationship with Howard Kurtz after he falsely claimed that the player had not disclosed that he had once been engaged to a woman.

On Sunday, Kurtz used his CNN show, Reliable Sources, to apologize and submit to a 15-minute grilling by Politico’s Dylan Byers and NPR’s David Folkenflik.

“On Monday, I read the ‘Sports Illustrated’ article by Jason Collins, the first pro male-team athlete to come out publicly as gay. I read it too fast and carelessly missed that Jason Collins said he was engaged previously to a woman and [I] then wrote and commented that he was wrong to keep that from readers when, in fact, I was the one that was wrong,” Kurtz explained.

"My logic between what happened between Jason Collins and his former fiance and what was and wasn’t disclosed — in hindsight, well, I was wrong to even raise that and showed a lack of sensitivity to the issue. Also, I didn’t give him a chance to respond to my account before I wrote it and in addition my first correction to the story was not as complete and full as it should have been."

Byers pointed out that Kurtz had a long history of making mistakes, including wrongly reporting that Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) had criticized the Obama administration and incorrectly attributing a quote to Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA).

"[T]here are times, being a human being, when I have slipped up. I ask people to look at the totality of my record but it is certainly fair to point out where I have fallen short and in those instances I have fallen short," Kurtz insisted.

Watch this video from CNN's Reliable Sources, broadcast May 5, 2013.